J-school students, like publishers, refuse to pay

The so-called Media Diet includes 2.5 hours a day of reading/viewing the news. (Photo credit: Adam Crowe)

Here’s one of those stories that ranks high on the “duh!” factor, at least in my opinion.

Those of us addicted to our computers and smart phones have been there before. We come across an intriguing story slug or headline tagged in that familiar shade of “click-me” blue. And so, we click.

And then the frustration mounts!

“I have to pay for this?” you ask yourself. “No way!”

And so you move on.

Apparently some journalism instructors have taken to asking their students if they would pay a nominal amount of money for access to Facebook. While some agree that a buck a month might be acceptable, none of the students were willing to pay any amount of money for access to news media sites. I’m the same way. The quickest way to send me in another direction is to demand I pay to read an online newspaper.

But why? After all, if I want the print version of a newspaper I know full well that I’m going to have to pay something. Or maybe it’s that I’m not willing to pay at all for any version of the news.

Who pays for what?

There’s a grand irony as I see it, and it’s contained in the quote attributed to a newspaper publisher in the story linked to above. Apparently the newspaper publisher incredulously believes that he doesn’t need readers, certainly not the college-educated, upwardly-mobile reader with a disposable income. Pssst! Don’t tell that to his advertisers or shareholders!

Even more telling is how this attitude will become painfully apparent to these budding journalists when they discover that their paychecks don’t have the disposable income sufficient to cover the cost of the online subscriptions they already refuse to pay, especially once they learn the reality of economics and discover that the rent is due before they eat! The sad fact throughout this 20-year long discussion within media circles regarding the shift towards electronic publishing is that the very people tasked with writing the stories that are supposed to engage and attract readers have seen their pay increase less, on a percentage basis, than has the federal minimum wage, during this same period of time.

Yet this arrogance seems to be popular with publishers and even some editors. Oh, they won’t say that, but it’s apparent in the “just get it out the door” attitude of newspaper publishing. Who cares what’s in the newspaper, as long as the sales staff is relatively successful?

Content… Content… Content

The problem with this attitude is the reader (you know, those people who advertisers hope see their printed sales pitch in the morning newspaper) are leaving in droves, taking with them the advertisers that pay the bills. While to a certain extent it seems that the newfound lack of income must be made up somewhere, publishers seem dumfounded at the unwillingness of readers to subsidize what for more than a century has been subsidized by the advertiser. Lost in this incredulity is the notion that the free market will simply not support something that has no intrinsic value.

As a reader and a consumer (and a J-school grad), I’ve long-since lost the willingness to pay for information that I can find for free in so many places. Moreover, I refuse to pay subscription rates for information, even that information that I can’t seem to find elsewhere, simply because I have determined that it ultimately has no value to my life. I’ve even stopped watching television news programs in part because I don’t trust them to provide me with useful, and in many cases, truthful information.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a service or a tangible product, consumers want to feel as if they’re getting something of value when they elect to exchange their hard-earned money for something, whether it be a piece of electronic gadgetry, a new car, or a form of media.

Amazing as it is, people are still willing to part with their income. One need look no farther than Apple, Inc. to see a shining example of how one company has found a way to create value and extract large sums of money from consumers. Newspaper publishers could do well to learn this if they expect to revive their dying publications.

Related articles

• Global Newspaper Publishing industry: Forecast to generate revenue of $170.5b in 2012 (nextlevelofnews.com)
• Will The Newspaper Industry Save Itself By Reinventing Online Advertising? (adpulp.com)
• As newspapers cut, analysts ask if readers will remain (nextlevelofnews.com)

Good journalism is still a great business model

You certainly don’t hear newspaper editors talk like this anymore. Then again can you blame them? Under the gun by publishers to produce copy for newspapers that they both know very few people read anymore, I’d surmise that most newspaper editors are simply there to get it out the door and move onto the next edition. As newsrooms cut staff and continue to pay abysmally low wages to the staff they can maintain it’s no wonder that the quality of local newspapers continues to decline.

The obituary for the American newspaper has arguably been written and published long ago. Yet, in some communities it’s refreshing to see or read about local newspapers that seem to have bucked this trend. A recent editorial in Anderson, California’s Anderson Valley Post heralds something I’ve only seen in the smaller community newspapers: readership.

Much of my journalism career was spent working for the smaller publications. Of the handful of newspapers I worked for over the course of my 13-year tenure in print media, nine months of that period was spent writing full time for a small daily before I took a job at a non-profit organization that started me at over $10,000 a year more than I was being paid at the daily newspaper. What’s truly sad is that more than 10 years after that job change I’ve discovered that many newspapers pay within a dollar or two an hour of what they did 15 years ago. In California the only reason this has changed is because the state’s minimum wage has changed a time or two in the past 15 years and newspapers have had to change to stay a few cents ahead of the minimum wage.

But I digress.

What was refreshing to read was the positive comments of an editor for his community, and his reporting of the positive comments that his community has for his newspaper.

The headline says it all: “It’s a good thing when community takes ownership.” Editor George Winship writes about the positive comments he overheard at a recent community breakfast he attended. Hold the presses! Newspaper editor attends community breakfast! On a Sunday? In most communities that’s unheard of, and where the editor might attend, he or she probably either tries to slip in and out without going noticed, or flashes in with the publisher in a failed attempt to score some advertising.

Anderson Valley Post Editor George Winship writes: “While it may seem strange to some, a local newspaper’s greatest assets are not calculated by how much money the advertising revenues bring in each month or how much profit is left over at the end of the year. Nor should the editor or anyone else associated with the newspaper’s operation consider their own efforts and accomplishments as having much worth.

“When all is said and done, what matters most is what its readers think.”

Can I get an “amen?” One could argue that the overall notion of customer service is woefully lacking in many business models today, particularly in the newspaper industry.

One small newspaper I worked for, the Modoc County Record in Alturas, California, was one of those amazing places where members of the community would wait in their cars starting at about 8 a.m. every Thursday, knowing full well that the newspaper wasn’t going to be available for another 90 minutes or so. And that was on a good day when the weather was clear and the courier didn’t have to bring the newspaper back from the printer, one hundred miles away in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in a blinding snowstorm. Even on those days the newspaper would typically hit the streets by lunchtime. Even then folks would wait in their cars outside the newspaper office, engines running and the heater blaring, waiting for the pickup to arrive and the staff to begin distributing the weekly newspaper.

I’ve said this in the past, but the success of a newspaper isn’t in its financial ledger, but in how many people can’t wait to get their hands on it when it’s published.

Let’s put it another way: people don’t generally pick up the newspaper to read the classified ads or scour the display ads inside; people pick up the newspaper to read about what’s going on inside their community. Whether they agree totally with what’s printed on the editorial page is immaterial.

That’s not to say that profit and loss margins are important; they are. I once had a friend who worked for a weekly newspaper in an affluent section of Phoenix, Arizona that had no sales staff. They employed reporters and other folks to publish the newspaper, but no sales staff. The publisher was the only salesman in the room. According to my friend, the publisher spent much of his day fielding phone calls from businesses requesting to advertise. How many newspapers in America could say they have businesses chasing them down to advertise, versus them having to coerce businessmen to cough up money to market their goods and services in the newspaper?

So, kudos to Winship and his Anderson Valley Post newspaper for serving his local community like he does and for recognizing that his business is driven by what the reader thinks. Kudos to those editors out there like Rick Holloway, now the owner and publisher of the Modoc County Record, who work hard to serve their communities with print periodicals, and who know what it takes to publish a newspaper that the community wants to read and can’t wait to get its hands on.

The American newspaper industry could learn a lesson from people like this, who understand that it’s not the advertising tail that wags the editorial dog, but that it’s the readers who determine whether the newspaper will be successful. Serve the reader (your customer) with quality journalism and the rest will follow.

Committing econnomic suicide

While I’ve not really followed the whole Glenn Beck fiasco — apparently some advertisers have pulled their ads from his national talk radio program for something he apparently said — the idea that businesses in this age of economic recession are reducing ANY of their advertising is economic suicide!

During the Great Depression the two biggest cereal companies, Post and Kellogg’s, competed for market share. Post severely cut back its advertising while Kellogg’s pressed on. Years later when America’s economy picked up, Kellogg’s was positioned to succeed by beating out Post for market share. This market share superiority continues today.

In today’s marketplace, pulling advertising from national Conservative talk radio shows is especially detrimental because of the large listener base that Conservative talk radio provides.

People today are smart enough to know why certain companies are doing this. While this news might provide a bit of free advertising for some of these companies, consumers will ultimately vote with their wallets and find other companies to spend their money on.

If I were a company competing against those that have made it known that they’re pulling their advertising from some of these programs I’d be jumping for joy and would be lining up to fill the space they vacated. The chance to promote my goods and services on Conservative talk radio would be most welcome, particularly if my competition is electing to spend their money on less-effective media.